Ray Ison, Professor in Systems at the UK Open University since 1994, is a member of the Applied Systems Thinking in Practice Group. From 2008-15 he also developed and ran the Systemic Governance Research Program at Monash University, Melbourne. In this blog he reflects on contemporary issues from a systemic perspective.

Friday, November 29, 2013

We have been shareholders of Hepburn Wind, a community-based renewables cooperative since inception. Hepburn have just had their AGM and released this report. Lots of good developments threatened unfortunately by the changing policy context.

"On Saturday 23 November we held our AGM
at the Daylesford Secondary School theatre and are most grateful to the
100+ members who showed up and participated in the official business of
running our co-operative. We also had a good additional crowd show up to
hear the keynote address by Professor Tim Flannery.

With Tony Gill and Simon Holmes à Court co-chairing the meeting we managed to successfully pass a number of special resolutions, present the 2012/13 annual report and share ideas with and answer questions from our members.

Members ratified the election of Candy Broad and Daniel Magasanik
to the board. We are looking forward to Daniel’s second term and to
welcoming Candy and her unique skills and experience. At the AGM we took
the opportunity to farewell and thank Dan Cass who retired having
served a full three year term on the board.

Professor
Tim Flannery gave a compelling presentation updating us on the latest
climate science developments and the work of the new Climate Council.
Tim commended our community for our local response to the challenge and
the leadership we have shown.

Aaron van Egmond, CEO of the Hepburn Shire, updated members about council’s renewable energy plans and our energy partner Red Energy explained our joint retail offering, the Community Saver. We were also pleased to host representatives from both VicWind and Yes2Renewables — two important groups who do great work in supporting and educating communities in the area of wind energy.

Carbon tax repeal submission

When our community committed to building
its own wind farm, we knew we'd have a lot of challenges to overcome.
But with each of the major parties committed (at the time) to both
making carbon polluters pay and growing the clean energy sector, we knew
we could count on our leaders to provide a favourable policy
environment.

Or so we thought.

Changes in Canberra are radically
shifting the goalposts for clean energy and for our co-operative. Just
18 months after big polluters started having to pay for dumping carbon
pollution into our atmosphere, Australia is on the cusp of unwinding
these important environmental gains.

Our members are watching the proposed legislative repeal with great concern and last week we made a submission
to the Senate Standing Committees on Environment and Communications’
Clean Energy Legislation (Carbon Tax Repeal) Bill 2013. We have
explained the likely impact of the repeal on our project and ultimately
on our community. We encourage members and supporters to read our submission.

Along with the millions of Australians
who are investors in renewable energy infrastructure through their
superannuation funds and the thousands of Australians who work in the
clean energy sector, the members of Hepburn Wind have a reasonable
expectation that changes in government policy will not harm their
interests.

Hepburn Wind farm was built by our
community for the benefit of our community. The repeal of the Carbon
Pricing Mechanism introduces a significant sovereign risk to the member
investors of our co-operative."

"Argyris
and Schon (1974) assert that people hold maps in their heads about
how to plan, implement and review their actions. They
further assert that few people are aware that the maps they use
to take action are not the theories they explicitly
espouse. Also, even fewer people are aware of the maps
or theories they do use (Argyris, 1980).To clarify, this is not
merely the difference between what people say and do.
Argyris and Schon suggest that there is a theory consistent with
what people say and a theory consistent with what they do.
Therefore the distinction is not between "theory and action but
between two different "theories of action" (Argyris, Putnam
& McLain Smith, 1985, p.82). Hence the concepts Espoused
theory and Theory-in-use:

Espoused
theory

The world view
and values people believe their behaviour is based on

Theory-in-use

The world view
and values implied by their behaviour, or the maps they use
to take action"

Based on: Anderson, L. (1994). Espoused
theories and theories-in-use: Bridging the gap (Breaking
through defensive routines with organisation development
consultants). Unpublished Master of Organisational
Psychology thesis, University of Qld.

Unfortunately few individuals have the courage of their convictions when it comes to acting ethically in response to human-induced climate change. Ian Dunlop is a notable exception. He is to be congratulated for taking on mining heavy-weight BHP/BHP-Billiton. In the process he has demonstrated how unethical major institutional investors still are in managing their portfolios and how much into groupthink the big miners are. Dunlop’s platform for nomination to the BHP board identified climate change as the single greatest strategic risk faced by BHP. In making his unsuccesful bid for election he said:

"The
future prosperity of BHP Billiton is of great importance, both in
Australia and globally,” ......"Climate
change poses a major strategic risk to that prosperity, and to
shareholder value that is a risk which has the ability to fundamentally
alter the direction of the company, or indeed to destroy it."In
common with the boards of most major global corporations, I believe the
board has fallen into the trap of 'groupthink' in failing to grasp the
enormity of the challenge that climate change poses to the business,”

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

These concentrate on second order cybernetics and consist of a mixture
of new work and critiques and appreciations of those who have gone
before. The series of 18 books which, when the covers are put together,
make a full reproduction of Breughel’s Tower of
Babel. There are a couple of further books which include the book
outcome of our {ASC} Troy conference, Trojan Horses: we have ordered copes for
all members and you will get these as soon as we can organise cheap
postage, in the new year. Please make sure that we
have a good address for you.

Amongst the publications is a selection of my papers in 3 volumes called
collectively The Black Boox. You can buy the volumes separately, or
subscribe to a collectors version with the 3 volumes with black covers
in a black box (a self-referential pun), signed
by the “artist”. The special offer price runs out on 18th November.

The second is the English language version of the Heinz/Karl and Albert
Mueller book, The Beginning of Heaven and Earth has No Name. You can pre-order the book here.

This is a book with a strong ASC connection. Heinz, of course, and the
Muellers who are both trustees of the society. Bruno Clark, recently
elected a trustee, too, is series editor. The German version of the book
dates back to the 1990s: we have waited a long
time.

The publication details are:

Heinz von Foerster (edited by Albert Mueller and Karl H Mueller), The
Beginning of Heaven and Earth Has No Name, Fordham University Press, NY

Monday, November 18, 2013

In outline, the conference is organised around a main event (4 to 8
August) consisting of paper sessions (4 and 5 August); a day for the
telling of the ASC story by past presidents and other elder states
people moving into dreams for the future (6 August, our
anniversary day); and a session for the future (7 and 8 August) in
which we consider how to bring cybernetics and learning together in all
aspects of education. There will also be pre- and post-conference days
(3 and 9 August). In addition, the ISSS conference will be on Long Island, just before the ASC conference, for those who would
like to go to both.

Learner empowerment – actively involving students in learning development and processes of co-creation

Future-facing education – enabling people to think critically,
creatively and flexibly to generate alternative visions of the future

Decolonising education – extending intercultural understanding and
experiences of students so they can be sensitive to global ways of
working

Transformative capabilities – seeing capabilities not just
as abilities but being able adapt a skill to be used in both familiar
and unfamiliar circumstances

Crossing boundaries – to support interdisciplinary, interprofessional and cross-sectoral learning

Social learning – developing cultures and environments for learning
that harness the emancipatory power of spaces and interactions outside
the formal curriculum, particularly through the use of new technologies
and co-curricular activities.

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is held up as an exemplar.I would claim that our STiP (Systems Thinking in Practice) Postgraduate programme, like ESD, offers many, perhaps all, of these flexibilties. We would certainly like to further strengthen moves in this direction in time. See for example the following chapter which relates to one of the core offerings in the programme:

Based on our OU experience with Systems education I would suggest that the researchers have missed one key 'flexibility' that of epistemological flexibility - the ability to appreciate one's epistemological commitments and traverse multiple epistemologies. This is a flexibility that the STiP programme sets out to address.

Leverage Networks, Inc. announces that it is reinventing the core
business of the former Pegasus Communications, Inc., through a new,
online platform. Having acquired most assets of Pegasus, including The
Systems Thinker® newsletter, publications, webinars
and other resources, the new company is focusing on creating effective
change by spreading the use of Organizational Learning, Systems
Thinking, System Dynamics, and related fields by providing relevant,
accessible resources and support. The new company will
be led by Rebecca Niles (Co-President), Kristina Wile (Co-President), and Kathleen Skaare (Marketing and Operations Director). Early advisers include
industry thought leaders and former Pegasus board members: LeAnne
Grillo, Ginny Wiley, Dave Packer, and Elayne Dorsey. Investors include
Ohana Holdings LLC, an investing arm of Pierre Omidyar, the founder of
eBay.

Leverage Networks will launch an interactive online platform
(www.leveragenetworks.com) for information hosting, community building
and referral services supporting the broader Systems Thinking
communities in an effort to increase adoption of the field. The
platform will include many of the original publications as well as new
digital and physical media such as articles, games, webinars, videos,
interactive mobile apps, a matching service for coaches and
practitioners, and an industry event calendar. For more
information about the launch of Leverage Networks, including product
sales and partnering information, please contact us:
info@leveragenetworks.com'

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Those who follow my Blogs will know that I have made several posts relating to the situation in Sri Lanka and Australia's policy position. My motivation comes from having been in Sri Lanka in 1983 just before the so-called 'civil war' erupted. In addition I have close friends and colleagues affected by what has happened, or more importantly what is failing to happen in terms of security, justice and reconciliation.

For someone with this background it amazes me how poorly understood Sri Lanka is by journalists and politicians alike. This came home to me in a posting yesterday by BBC correspondent Nick Robinson. What is telling is that in the stories he reported he clearly did not know that there are at least two main Tamil communities in Sri Lanka - those from the north, around Jaffna who have lived there for over 2000 years - and who for much of that time have been marginalised by the majority Sinhala community. So the conflict, in historical terms is not new. Nor is the ongoing injustice. The other Tamil community are more recent arrivals to the areas around Kandy brought in from India by the British as labour in the tea plantations. These different histories create different interests and experiences. If you read Robinson's post the issues become more apparent.

This year Michelle de Kretser's novel 'Questions of Travel' won the Miles Franklin Award in Australia. One of the protaganists is Sri Lankan and an asylum seeker who ends up in Australia, by plane as it happens rather than boat. However the novel captures well the fear that drove him to Australia and the degradation he had to endure to arrive. It is hard to imagine that anyone in Australia who has read this novel can be fooled by the idea that supporting an authoritarian regime and providing military boats to keep those who are oppressed within has any moral integrity. But what about those who don't read novels? How much longer can the simplistic framing of the issues by this, and previous Australian government be sustained?

To date I have not had much time for David Cameron's policies but his stance and actions in his CHOGM visit are to be admired. The contrast with Tony Abbot is telling and compelling. It is hard to imagine that Abbot has gained the ego boost that sustains him in a context where CHOGM was rejected by the Queen, the Indian PM, the Canadian PM and Mauritius. To be in Rajapakse's good books is in international circles a badge of dishonour. In creating the circumstances where it was offered and then accepted our PM dishonours all Australians.

"... the issue is not CHOGM, but is rather what will happen next with
Australia's adopted position on Sri Lanka, pursued by both Labour and
Coalition governments since 2009, and the depths of hypocrisy that our
own political leaders may shortly be compelled to trawl. Have our
political leaders placed short-term domestic political considerations to
deal with those thousands of boat people who inundated our shores last
year, at some cost to our long-term interests?"

Sunday, November 10, 2013

So many of the actions of the new Australian Government seem destined to send Australia into reverse in a world where others are committed to heading in a more progressive, some might claim enlightened, direction. A particular case in point is the Coalition's climate-change policy. Much has been said about this but possibly not enough about the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. In systemic termsclosing this organisation down makes no sense.

After some hiatus I understand the Corporation will soon resume lending - it cannot be closed until legislation passes through the federal government and at the moment the Coalition does not have the numbers in the Senate. This is good news as is the fact that it makes money - i.e., it is economically viable in that it returns money to government at an above average rate. It is also off budget. Evidence for keeping the Corporation comes from South Africa, that other country with a dirty, coal-influenced, economy where:

"The latest Independent Development
­Corporation research projects claim that more than 460 000 jobs could
be created by South Africa's green economy — more than by the entire
mining industry.The IDC report, and a second report prepared by the Institute for
Sustainable Futures, predicts that 98 000 green jobs will be created
within the next two years and 462 567 jobs stemming from green activities will be created in the next eight years.In comparison, the mining industry currently creates 389 000 jobs,
according to Statistics South Africa's most recent Quarterly Labour
Force Survey, published on Tuesday.The utilities sector employs less than one-third of that, providing 129 000 jobs.According to the IDC survey, the total number of people employed in
South Africa increased by 383 000 between September 2012 and 2013.Going green will increase the number of jobs by a similar amount over the best part of a decade, the IDC report said."

Depite the power of coal interests in South Africa I perceived, on a recent visit, that the government is embracing a shift to renewables because of the vulnerability of its current energy system (despite coal), the changing economics and the potential renewables offer for community-based livelihoods, and thus social transformation, that is central to ANC policy. On the flight from London to Joburg I sat next to a Brighton (UK)-based, German consultant/businesswoman who was involved in a major wind project in the Northern Cape. The scope was impressive.

"I honestly have no convincing answer to this question, and can only suggest five contributory (and overlapping) possible causes:1. History
Deconstructing the speeches of people like Osborne and Tony Abbott (the
new Australian Prime Minister) suggests that their overall view of
green politics in general is one trapped in a set of historical (and
largely outdated) precepts: that all Greens are essentially
crypto-communists with a deep hatred of markets and capitalism in
general. As former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl once said: “they’re all
like tomatoes - they may start out green but they all go red in the
end”.2. Blighted Brains
I’m sorry about this ungenerous thought, but you do sometimes wonder if
their intellectual capabilities have been permanently damaged by
excessive exposure to the unforgiving orthodoxies of neo-liberal
economics. Focusing on the green economy requires a lot of hybrid
thinking (as in smart regulation and market instruments) rather than
economic mono-railing).3. Political Capture
The centre-right (without much opposition from the centre-left,
it has to be said!) has become the principal cheer leader for the
fossil fuel and extractive industries. With both votes and money at
stake (vast amounts of money in both the US and Australia), these
politicians are in effect the creatures of the industries that have most
to lose in the transition to low-carbon, resource-efficient business
models.4. Cognitive Dissonance
So completely are they ‘owned’ by these industries that they seem
unaware of their own intellectual incoherence. For instance, like all
good disciples of market economics, they espouse the view that markets
only work when the price we pay for something reflects its true cost.
Yet they go to unbelievable lengths to ensure that markets remain
hopelessly distorted by refusing to internalise the cost of carbon into market prices today.5. The Slippery Slope I find this one hard to believe, but
it was seriously suggested to me in New Zealand that politicians are
scared witless of where all this leads - as in “give them a few green
inches and next thing you know you’ll have gone the whole green mile
into the weird and wacky world of tree-hugging vegetarianism”."

Abstract: When Heinz von Foerster coined the term
“second order cybernetics,” his goal was to include the observer in the
domain of science. This was a fundamental change in the conception of
science, and Heinz encountered stiff opposition.
One consequence of including the observer would be to extend
cybernetics (and science) into the domain of ethics. Scientists had
previously sought to be objective. Including the observer made science a
subjective enterprise. This suggestion was strongly
resisted by Heinz’s colleagues in the UIUC College of Engineering and
elsewhere in the U.S. academic community.

Since
Heinz retired and moved to California, the people involved in
cybernetics in the U.S. have been mostly social scientists. Rather than
people with backgrounds in neurophysiology, psychology,
mathematics and philosophy, those interested in cybernetics tended to
be therapists, management scientists, sociologists and people concerned
with design. Including the observer in science led to interest in
scientific theories as part of social systems.
Several conceptions of second order science have now been formulated.
If we use the correspondence principle (i.e., every new theory should
reduce to the old theory to which it corresponds for those cases in
which the old theory is known to hold), we can
say that two dimensions have been added to the conception of science:
a) amount of attention paid to the observer, and b) the amount of effect
of a theory on the phenomenon described.

Stuart Umpleby
is a professor of management at the George Washington University in
Washington, DC. He studied with Heinz von Foerster and Ross Ashby
at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. He is a past
president of the American Society for Cybernetics.

The
lecture is organized by the Heinz von Foerster Society in cooperation
with WISDOM and the Institut für Zeitgeschichte/Universität Wien and
supported by the City of Vienna and Blaha Office.

Monday, November 04, 2013

I have been meaning to make a post about the phenomenon that emerged from the recent Federal Elections in Australia called the Voice for Indi (V4i). Much has now been written about V4i in the Australian media - the excerpt below comes from the Bank of I.D.E.A.S newsletter (with thanks).

Cathy McGowan, now the Independent Member for Indi in the Federal Parliament completed an MSc at Hawkesbury in Systemic Development (or Systems Agriculture?) which is where I first met Cathy. She is an amazing character as exemplified in many ways, including taking time to write me a hand written thank you note for my donation to her campaign - written only two days before the election.

"A
remarkable campaign has been run in the recent national election in
Australia, where the people of the rural electorate of Indi
stood up against the party politics domination and demonstrated the
power of community by electing a community member over a 12 year veteran
and senior member of the Liberal Party.

Cathy McGowan was the nominated member of the Voice of Indi movement.
Click on the following links to read about their achievement:
Article 1 and Article 2.

The values that guide their actions and decisions are summarised as –

·V
4 i is committed to encouraging a diversity of voices and opinion, and
participation in the electoral process both regionally and nationally

·V 4 i is committed to ensuring that our electorate voice is heard, and represented at the national level

·V 4 i is committed to encouraging respectful and mature representation of our democratic voices

·V 4 i is committed to undertaking activities which will create an invitation to participate in our democracy

·V 4 i is committed to developing and using simple, elegant processes when engaging with the electorate

·V
4 i is committed to being honest and respectful, to being well
informed, and to referring to reputable sources when making statements"

What
is important to take from this story is the design considerations that
underpin the success in systemic governance innovation. In governance
innovation terms it stands out against the systemic failure of so much
of the rest of the election.

Sunday, November 03, 2013

Michael Lissack has developed a new site which he calls 'epi-thinking' for 'evoking a new way of thinking which recognizes that:

Actions have a fundierung relationship with context and

Cognition has a fundierung relationship with semiotic
affordances.

For Lissak 'fundierung (following Hegel) is 'the "overlooked taken for granted" things which underlie an action
or understanding -- and have the power to change things merely by being
paid attention to.'

Jeremy Paxman, of BBC2 Newsnight fame, may well come to be remembered most for his interview with Russell Brand calling for a revolution - as Martin Flanagan says in his article in yesterday's Age: 'I suspect Russell Brand is somehow speaking to the future.'

Monday, September 23, 2013

Advice has recently been received about an new EPSRC-funded Systems Initiative.

"Systems-NET has been funded by EPSRC with
the rationale of adding significant value to the UK’s industrial and
academic base by enabling development of key cross-sector engagements
and contributing to solve some of the UK’s emerging and
future societal challenges. The UK systems community (academia,
industrial and other stake holders) has the potential to achieve this
provided it takes a coherent approach that is driven by real needs.Systems-NET aims to strengthen connections
between university research and industrial applications so that the
expanding complexity of present and future systems can be described,
analysed and understood.The purpose of this email is to make you aware of the network and
to encourage you to join. There is no cost and we welcome participation
from those new to the field who wish to find out more about systems
through to more experienced practitioners.Please take a look at the Systems-NET web site and/or contact the organisers at Loughborough University
if you are interested in finding out more

There is also a section in the website where you can register your interest. This will help us keep you informed of new developments.

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Our STiP postgraduate program at the Open University (UK) continues to strengthen on a
range of measures.For example, evidence
of STiP impact to date can be seen through citations data and sales figures for
the set of co-published books produced for the STiP programme (Table 1 and photo of books)
as well as publication, including citation, data for recent scholarly
publications by the STiP team.

Table
1.Book sales (includes print sales,
MyCopy sales, bulk sales and individual eBook sales – as of April 2013) and
chapter downloads Jun 06, 2010 - March 2013 of the four books co-published by
the Open University with Springer (UK) for use in the STiP (Systems Thinking in
Practice MSc programme).

Springer
also report the following visits to the book home pages during 2012: ST= 447
times; SA = 992 times; SP = 419 times; SLS = 617 times (see Table 1 for
abbreviations).

The
poster below was prepared for a Public Sector Fair held in London earlier in
2013. It shows some of the many links to websites and blogs generated by our STiP alumni. An excellent example is the site 'Just Practicing' authored by Helen Wilding, one of our first STiP graduates (photographed below with David Robertson, another STiP graduate).

In addition
to the four books described in Table 1, five book chapters, three conference
papers and one journal paper have been published based around STiP scholarship.
STiP researchers have delivered 15 invited talks and/or keynotes and a range of
other academic outputs. Examples of scholarly publications related to STiP include:

Ison, R.L. (2012) Systems practice:
making the systems in farming systems research effective. In Ika Darnhofer,
David Gibbon and Benoit Dedieu (eds). The farming systems approach into the
21st century: The new dynamic. pp. 141-158.Springer, Dordrecht.